Trump Administration Mulls First US Nuclear Test in Decades (chron.com) 119
The Trump administration "has discussed whether to conduct the first U.S. nuclear test explosion since 1992," reports the Washington Post, "in a move that would have far-reaching consequences for relations with other nuclear powers and reverse a decades-long moratorium on such actions, said a senior administration official and two former officials familiar with the deliberations."
The matter came up at a meeting of senior officials representing the top national security agencies last Friday, following accusations from administration officials that Russia and China are conducting low-yield nuclear tests — an assertion that has not been substantiated by publicly available evidence and that both countries have denied.
A senior administration official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the sensitive nuclear discussions, said that demonstrating to Moscow and Beijing that the United States could "rapid test" could prove useful from a negotiating standpoint as Washington seeks a trilateral deal to regulate the arsenals of the biggest nuclear powers. The meeting did not conclude with any agreement to conduct a test, but a senior administration official said the proposal is "very much an ongoing conversation."
Another person familiar with the meeting, however, said a decision was ultimately made to take other measures in response to threats posed by Russia and China and avoid a resumption of testing... During the meeting, serious disagreements emerged over the idea, in particular from the National Nuclear Security Administration, according to two people familiar with the discussions.
The Post points out that since 1945 "at least eight countries have collectively conducted about 2,000 nuclear tests, of which more than 1,000 were carried out by the United States.
"The environmental and health-related consequences of nuclear testing moved the process underground, eventually leading to near-global moratorium on testing in this century with the exception of North Korea."
A senior administration official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the sensitive nuclear discussions, said that demonstrating to Moscow and Beijing that the United States could "rapid test" could prove useful from a negotiating standpoint as Washington seeks a trilateral deal to regulate the arsenals of the biggest nuclear powers. The meeting did not conclude with any agreement to conduct a test, but a senior administration official said the proposal is "very much an ongoing conversation."
Another person familiar with the meeting, however, said a decision was ultimately made to take other measures in response to threats posed by Russia and China and avoid a resumption of testing... During the meeting, serious disagreements emerged over the idea, in particular from the National Nuclear Security Administration, according to two people familiar with the discussions.
The Post points out that since 1945 "at least eight countries have collectively conducted about 2,000 nuclear tests, of which more than 1,000 were carried out by the United States.
"The environmental and health-related consequences of nuclear testing moved the process underground, eventually leading to near-global moratorium on testing in this century with the exception of North Korea."
A Nuclear Explosion? Thank God! (Score:3, Insightful)
COVFEFE-20 (Score:4, Funny)
COVFEFE-20
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We have to open up the ionosphere.
I didn't RTFA but this would likely be an underground test.
Chinese and Russian seismographs will surely be impressed with the detonation of a relatively low-yield warhead. :/
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Contrasted with 8 digit Anonymous Cowards? Interesting troll.
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Re:A Nuclear Explosion? Thank God! (Score:4, Informative)
Nuclear tests show up on seismographs, for that matter even large underground conventional explosions show up on seismographs. If seismologists say it didn't happen then it didn't happen, no matter what some forged document sold to the CIA might say.
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Did NK really detonate a bomb, or did they pack a shitload of TNT into a hole and sprinkle it with uranium? We don't know for sure but the government probably does behind top secret, and won't reveal the truth either way for obvious reasons.
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We know. The readioactive aerosols found a consistant with a nuclear explosion and not with uranium or something out of a reactor.
And it is not possible to fake a 100+k ton explosion with TNT.
Only for the very first NK test there were some speculations that it would have been possible to fake it.
https://www.newscientist.com/a... [newscientist.com]
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I know, right? Think how embarrassing it would be if we fired off all our nukes and none of them actually exploded!
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Well, the good news is that you don't have to be embarrassed about it for too long.
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True that. Personally I'm on the side of launching early and heavy, ideally with something that makes it uncertain if we've really launched. That way, sure a good chunk of the earth is uninhabitable for a bit but we survived.
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Radiation, prevailing wind patterns, jet streams. I'm not entirely sure you have thought this through.
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Yup, all things to be considered extensively by computers before launching. I'm fairly sure we've spent billions thinking about those things and anything else some random guy on the net is going to raise as objection through. Believe it or not any launch wouldn't just be some guy pointing a cursor at a target, turning a key, and pressing a big red button.
Granted much of that thinking is out of date but that is what the current President is trying to do something about.
Re: A Nuclear Explosion? Thank God! (Score:2)
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Well, it's at least nice to see America do something for a change that they have experience and had good results with so far.
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And who ever modded you down is a total douche bad. I wish there was a mod topic called Ironic, because Funny just doesn't really describe your post.
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Do you have a citation on that? I don't see how nuclear testing can harm the ionosphere. It's continually regenerated by the solar wind.
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Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean does he wake up in the morning, yawn, stretch, and then think "How can I fuck up America's international reputation even more today?"
Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
Make America Glow Again
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I mean does he wake up in the morning, yawn, stretch, and then think "How can I fuck up America's international reputation even more today?"
I doubt it. That would mean thinking of people other than himself.
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Because "international reputation" is *really, really important*, right? Who cares, they'll keep coming back, because this is where the money is.
Re:Really? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's more sucking up to the dumb but strong schoolyard bully. You pretend to be his friend so you get to pick up the pennies when he shakes the nerds down for their lunch money, but behind his back you're laughing over him and you really hope that he eventually fucks up enough that he gets expelled.
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They're bashing down walls, fences and swimming through wide rivers to get to the USA. They're booking birthing trips to purposefully create an anchor baby to be able to stay in the USA. They pay from 25 to 2000 USD for visa just to visit. Pure physical force or the inability to overcome the hurdles is needed to keep the number of immigrants down to a few million a year. Visitors are far more numerous and enough of them simply overstay their visa forever to remain in the USA.
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Until the petrodollar goes away, then we are really and truly fucked.
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Because "international reputation" is *really, really important*, right? Who cares, they'll keep coming back, because this is where the money is.
Of course it is important, why do you think the world relies so much on the USA banks, dollars etc. - it is because US can be trusted and is (used to be) a symbol of stability and reliability - not any more, the world is already experimenting with replacement for petro-dollars, once it happens bye, bye unlimited deficit - we will have to pay for it and will be a subject to all it's consequences.
With regard to "MAGA", it sound great, but firstly look what actually made US great - relentless work of immigra
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International leadership actually is important. You know, getting other countries to do what we want and actually work with us. Rather than burn every bridge we've built in the last 70 years and have every other country on Earth give us the finger when we need them to cooperate.
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Because "international reputation" is *really, really important*, right?
Yes.
Who cares, they'll keep coming back, because this is where the money is.
No.
Seriously, you should take a course on macro-economics and then follow it up with some political science with some electives in history.
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Have some Zeihan to discredit your position:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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You mean he knows there are countries outside of the US?
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Of course he does. .There's countries like Norway and then there are "shithole countries" like Africa and Haiti.
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Fucking TDS. Why do you always take pot-shots at the greatest president we've ever had? Of course he knows there are other countries [nymag.com]. He's mentioned how many they are a number of times.
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You misunderstand. I am not taking shots at president Dumb. I am taking shots at those even worse morons that voted him into office, i.e. you. The orange man is just a symptom. The problem is the likes of you.
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I'm pretty sure he's heard of China. Actually didn't he call a bunch of other countries shitholes one time? So he does seem aware on some level.
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Thankfully, most of us don't give a flying f#&% about "International Reputation", because that usually involves sucking up to some useless waste of food doing a make-work job in Turtle Bay.
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Thankfully, most of us don't give a flying f#&% about "International Reputation"
A lot of irrelevant countries have thought the same thing in the past.
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Not quite, he just thinks nuclear explosions are kickass and make you look tough and he isn't mature enough to restrain himself.
Be honest, if you were 8 years old you'd be sorely tempted to set off a nuclear bomb for shits n' giggles if you had the power to, the world's awesomest black-market firecracker. That's Trump on the inside.
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Yes, except for the "think" part. The man is pure id and while I can respect that, not for a president for chrissake.
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I mean does he wake up in the morning, yawn, stretch, and then think "How can I fuck up America's international reputation even more today?"
That was Obama. Just check out his farewell tour. Look for riots in Greece, how China snubbed him and so on. MSM didn't report much on it of course. Everyone hated him. The only reason some countries agree to meet him is because he was the POTUS. One country would have arrested him if it wouldn't have caused an international incident. There's time, Obama may end up being arrested and sent to Mexico to face the gun crimes he committed. Maybe he can serve his time in a Mexican prison. I'm sure you don't belie
Here me out. (Score:2)
This is a good thing because we're about to learn how to stop a hurricane with a nuke. The only other effective weapon against a hurricane is a sharpie to change it's trajectory. ;)
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Yes, it is a joke. In the past he inquired if we could "nuke" a hurricane to stop it [axios.com]. He also altered a map (badly) showing the projected path of a hurricane by using a sharpie. [wordpress.com]
A smiley face at the end of my posts generally mean it's intended to be humorous. I try to use them consistently to avoid Poe's Law.
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Got me they're. ;)
Who thinks up this stuff? (Score:2)
Who thinks up this stuff? The US wishes to demonstrate to Russia and China that it can dig a hole in the desert and light off a nuke on fairly short notice? What a shock!
I've had the misfortune of experiencing various senior people wishing to "demonstrate" some capability. This is usually something that's completely straightforward but a fair amount of work for what amounts to a stun
Re:Who thinks up this stuff? (Score:5, Insightful)
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...and extremely badly in other circles. Most politicians can recognize that and realize the trade-off falls on the wrong side - the people that this appeals to are already your voters, the important swing voters are the ones who will be put off. But it seems Trump is looking at his North Korean buddy's 100% approval rating, and thinking he can do the same by emulating him.
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I feel this may be the election where the candidate with the least amount of press ends up winning because the other guy alienated too many voters.
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"how badly he handled every fucking thing that he has ever touched in his life
FTFY
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Why are you hitting yourself? (Score:2)
The bizarre thing about nuclear weapons is that they've destroyed far more land of the powers that use them than of the people who they've been used against. This goes for any power that develops nukes--huge tracts of land in the US and USSR are still closed because of tests.
Of course Japan, as the sole country to have had nukes used on it "wins" the dubious distinction of suffering most of the casualties from nukes; but their land is relatively unspoiled. In fact, the peaceful use of nuclear power has ru
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The nukes essentially stops us from having retarded world wars, but well, you must know that all the sides have the stuff working to keep the "MAD peace" working.
China, US and Russia should each show the smallest nuclear explosion they can do to keep the things in check.
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The nukes essentially stops us from having retarded world wars
Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan and a bunch of other places in which smaller "proxy wars" took place would like a word with you. All of these things were part of the larger Cold War, and while not as bad as WW2, few things before were either. WW2 probably had such a huge body count because it was the perfect confluence of killing technology with older tactics. Nukes don't stop India and Pakistan from going at it, although it's not "all out", the
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There's no "peace beam" you can shoot at the whole world to end all the wars, so we do with what we have, and your "clean resolution" probably would be something absolutely disgusting like biological/chemical weapons.
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Indeed.
10 for each country is probably more than enough.
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yuuuuge (Score:2, Insightful)
On the other hand, I wouldn't be surprised if it actually happens, either. Let's be sure to kick down EVERY foundation block of the current world order. Nobody cares what replaces it, right?
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Well, seeing as the Americans have done an absolutely shit job with the "world order" B.S, nobody will be sorry to see them go. All they do is bully and intimidate and bomb brown people countries. The U.S. have literally lied to world in order to get a UN approval to invade a sovereign nation, with the only motive of furthering their own geo-political interests. You can look up videos of Rumsfeld and Bush presenting or referring to evidence of WMDs they know is fake. Everybody knows that war was illegal,
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Well, seeing as the Americans have done an absolutely shit job with the "world order" B.S, nobody will be sorry to see them go. All they do is bully and intimidate and bomb brown people countries. The U.S. have literally lied to world in order to get a UN approval to invade a sovereign nation, with the only motive of furthering their own geo-political interests. You can look up videos of Rumsfeld and Bush presenting or referring to evidence of WMDs they know is fake. Everybody knows that war was illegal, and everyone knows there will be no consequences for the culprits. That's your American world order. That war cost more than a million lives and has caused a massive destabilisation in the Middle-East. The invasion was in 2003 and today we still suffer the consequences. It directly resulted in the rise of ISIS and contributed to the massive refugee crisis across the M-E and in Europe.
Itâ(TM)s been a good long time since the United States last won a war, and that for at least fifty years its foreign military interventions, whether acknowledged or clandestine, have been nothing but a succession of disgraces culminating in failures.
The US has been far, far, omg far from perfect in terms of world leadership. However, the current status keeps the world generally turning from year to year. Between WW2 and now, there hasn't been another world war, a nuclear war, or any sort of complete blow-up. Quite an improvement from the late 1800s to early 1900s.
With the US-led order getting kicked over (Trump working hard at it) we can stop worrying about the small crap that we've been quibbling over for the last few decades and start worrying
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I wouldn't post this anywhere he's likely to see it, but it should be possible to set off a group of nuclear bombs to spell out "TRUMP" in craters across some wildlife refuge.
A nuclear deterrant only works if... (Score:1)
both you and your potential opponents know your weapons work. An untested deterrent has the very real potential to become an invitation to attack if the perception ever becomes that one's primary defense is in the form of deterence and that deterrence may have been neglected to the point of no longer being dependable
One of the problems many people ignore is that nuclear weapons degrade over time; Eventually they must be replaced. A related problem is that manufacturing techniques change over time and differ
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That is true but we do spend billions on supercomputers and other facilities to calculate and predict these types of things without testing, and for good reason.
https://www.energy.gov/article... [energy.gov]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
What is really in shambles however is the equipment around them, the silo's, the the bases and the machines that control the missiles as well as the protocols for maintaining all that support gear. The door left open story while an officer was napping and the giant floppy disks that
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That is true but we do spend billions on supercomputers and other facilities to calculate and predict these types of things without testing, and for good reason.
You can still blow up subcritical lumps of plutonium to see what happens:
https://www.lanl.gov/discover/... [lanl.gov]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Ignition_Facility
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Thank you for that article, quite interesting stuff, and more reason the think anyone who thinks we need full scale warhead testing is not aware of the amount of effort that has been put into this stuff to learn as much and if not more than full scale testing ever could. Full scale testing is both inefficient and immoral.
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You mean battleships were useless. Destroyers were the workhorses of the fleet. [kgbudge.com]
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A nation would have to be absolutely desperate to attack the US with nuclear weapons. Even if they were pretty sure our nukes don't work, all it takes is one or maybe a handful of successful weapons to make the war not worth it. So who is going to gamble that 100% of the 4,000+ nukes we still have are non-functional? Nobody.
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both you and your potential opponents know your weapons work...
We do know they work, because they have been tested. There is no need to test old designs over and over again like someone gone loopy. All that needs to be done is to create new nukes based on the old designs by using the old methods and there should be no reason to believe that these don't work. Of course there is the degradation and so old nukes need to be replaced, with some of the new ones not working due to a small failure rate, but overall will they work... unless there is evidence of a new problem, w
Re: A nuclear deterrant only works if... (Score:2)
There was this quote about this tough guy pointing a gun, but the even tougher guy says, Are you going to shoot me, because just pointing it at me would be, you know,insincere
Re: A nuclear deterrant only works if... (Score:2)
There was this quote about this tough guy pointing a gun, but the even tougher guy says, Are you going to shoot me, because just pointing it at me would be insincere
Shoot it into space (Score:1)
If they can manage to get their bombs safely into space and detonate them far enough from Earth then why not?! It would mean having less nuclear material on the planet (if the rockets don't blow up half way through the atmosphere...) and the knowledge from conducting nuclear tests in space could possibly be used to push asteroids of collision course or, and there's an idea, to fight off an alien invasion.
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Nuclear missiles have enough fuel to deliver the warhead to a low suborbital trajectory, thousands of kilometers below geostationary satellites. Detonating at that altitude would produce an EMP that would fry any satellites in the area and maybe everything below too, I'm not sure about that part. To get them to escape velocity they would have to be put on a rocket designed for a trip to Mars or something similar. Certainly this would be possible, but doesn't sound like a cheap proposition even in the con
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(if the rockets don't blow up half way through the atmosphere...)
And that's the big reason why that'll never happen. Way too risky. Plenty of people already lose their minds over the RTGs that get sent up in spacecraft. Sending an actual nuclear weapon up? Short of war, that'll never happen.
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Hey let's launch a rocket into space with a nuke as the payload, what could possibly go wrong?
You'd have every single nuclear power on the planet on High Alert (basically their equivalent of DefCon 2, maybe DefCon 1!) and almost guaranteed at least one of them would get so fucking nervous that we're launching a pre-emptive nuclear strike against *them* that they'd launch everything they've got at *us*.
Then there's this: What if it fucks up? Doesn't even make it to orbit, re-enters, descending uncontrolled with the warhead armed? Maybe we can't manage to self-destruct it? Now what happens? We've sta
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How about assembling it in space? We do already send spacecrafts with nuclear material into orbit so we could send nukes up in parts, assemble it there and send it further out (or closer to the sun), let it detonate in a safe distance where the solarwind then blows the remains further away. And: every nation gets to observe it, leaves no doubt, and it might even look pretty.
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Hey everyone we're going to ship a functional nuclear warhead into orbit to attach to a rocket we're assembling in orbit to shoot out into the solar wind and detonate just as a test, no way we're going to aim it at any countries we're not getting along with to blow them up, no worries, totally legit!
Yeah, NO.
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Yeah, NO.
Your virtue signalling isn't going to stop governments from testing, dude. Only politics have stopped the nuclear powers from putting nukes into space. India, China, Russia and the US will have plans on how to do it and those won't be safe plans. And once they do decide for new tests will they do it to protect your right to dislike the tests... That's just how they think. At best will they listen to new ideas for tests. So, assuming you could sell the governments the idea of testing their nukes in space far
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It brings in mind Russian sci-fi duology "Worm" by Lazarevich [lib.ru], published in 1992.
It goes like that... Russians have sent to Mars two armies of self-evolving robots who fought each other and produced valuable military designs as a byproduct. But the experiment spiraled out of control. Then, the Russians have built a spaceship loaded with nuclear warheads, to nuke the entire surface of Mars and destroy the robot armies. It's only a fraction of the plot synopsys. The entire novel is a sort of an apocalyptic
Why not... he's trying to turn time backwards any (Score:2)
Doh!
Oh for fucks' sake thought we were past this shit? (Score:2)
Republicans, you can't support this, not and claim to be sane.
We've still got all the nuclear weapons we'll ever need, and for fucks' sake I support the U.S. having and maintaining a strong military, but we DO NOT need to be setting off nuclear bombs for 'testing' or any other casual purpose.
Okay keep perspective (Score:1, Troll)
"following accusations from administration officials that Russia and China are conducting low-yield nuclear tests"
This isn't 'accusations' we can detect the testing so even if the intelligence is classified the administration knows the answer. It isn't some sketchy or nebulous claim. We know they are up to shenanigans.
Second I don't recall all this freaking out when Obama began the programs to develop small portable nuclear weapons which could be actively used without total destruction. Were you under the i
Re: Okay keep perspective (Score:3)
Where do you get the impression this was Obama's idea?
https://foreignpolicy.com/2012... [foreignpolicy.com]
Or that nobody was complaining about it?
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01... [nytimes.com]
Really dude, google for ten seconds please.
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"following accusations from administration officials that Russia and China are conducting low-yield nuclear tests"
Russia and China are conducting subcritical tests, which are explicitly allowed by the non-proliferation treaties. Nobody stops the US from conducting them.
Second I don't recall all this freaking out when Obama began the programs to develop small portable nuclear weapons which could be actively used without total destruction.
Obama did no such thing. Moreover, the development of nuclear weapons with the yield below 5kt is explicitly prohibited in the US by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] . Somewhat larger nuclear weapons ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] ) have been in the US arsenal since 60-s.
Oh yay (Score:4, Insightful)
The first week of November can't come soon enough. Not that it's going to fix the massive cluster fuck that is the U.S., but maybe, just maybe, we won't add nuclear war to the growing list of reasons why 2020 is the worst year of our lifetimes.
We avoided that in the 20th century because there were leaders who cared about things other than themselves. Now though, I'm not sure about that.
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Trump hasn't started a single war. In fact, he tried to end the Syria and Afghanistan wars, only to be overruled by the Pentagon and unelected DC government.
Now get out your fingers and start counting the wars Obama started. You'll need both hands.
I don't know about you.... (Score:1)
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Nuke it from orbit. (Score:1)
So? (Score:1)
WW3 might be worth trying .. what do we have to lose?
RTFA: topic came up and was dismissed (Score:2)
"... a decision was ultimately made to take other measures."
Of course it was discussed because yes all ideas get brought to the table and it was DISMISSED.
All sources were anonymous so really this whole thing is technically hearsay.
No one really dwelt on the reason it was discussed ie. Russia and China are conducting tests. I guess that's okay and really nobody should even discuss any kind of action against that.
Hypocrits (Score:2)
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Actually, we're not completely sure of that. These warheads are decades old now. No one has detonated a nuclear weapon that's been sitting around for that long. Scientists are reasonably sure they'll still work, but if you really want to be sure there's really only one way to find out.